The Velvet Light Trap

Lucerito is undoubtedly the most iconic female youth star from 1980s Mexico, yet she and her films are absent from every strand of Mexican media history. This article offers a new approach to 1980s Mexican cinema that focuses on the business behind commercial cinema and youth stardom. Lucerito’s multiplatform career is intertwined with the development of Mexican media giant Televisa; through strategic cross-promotion, as well as horizontal and vertical integration, the conglomerate created a foolproof formula completely dependent upon youth stars like Lucerito to draw audiences to theaters for the cinematic productions I call “Televisa youth star films.” To better understand Lucerito’s fame and her place in the Mexican imagination, the second prong of this article reconstructs her star image in extradiegetic texts surrounding the films Coqueta (1985), Fiebre de amor (1986), Delincuente (1986), and Escápate conmigo (1988). Relatable and ideal, chaste, yet safely sexy, Lucerito was part of a conservative project of girlhood that reveals larger overlapping interests between distinct religious, state, and private entities in Mexico.